Acutely Us
by DeejayMil
Summary: This is the part where a story is told. There are ferrets, mistakes, birthdays, apologies, and dances. There's Spencer and Aaron and Jack and the life they make together... it all begins with a goat


**Acutely Us**

 **.**

 **.**

 **20 a boy**

The boy stood alone and his tie was crooked.

It was entirely on purpose, both of those things. In fact, as he stood there and scanned the waiting faces tilted up towards him, he smiled and readjusted his tie to a more aggressively acute angle. He coughed; the crowd quietened.

And he stepped forward and said, "I'm thankful for many things in my life. My life, for one. It'd be pretty hard to be thankful without it. Math, for another." The crowd tittered on the first, looked quizzical at the second, but the boy wasn't looking at them anymore. He appeared to be, but his gaze was locked on two men sitting by the front. Both looked back. Both smiled. "But most of all, I'm thankful for my parents." One more pause. "All three of them."

And in that crowd one of the men looked away to hide his expression. Dark eyes glinting, the other man held his hand.

They were thankful for the boy—but not a boy anymore, not for a long time—and his crooked tie.

And they were thankful for the years between.

"This is the part where I tell a story," the newly titled Dr. Hotchner said, and pulled a face to show his disdain. "Don't worry, I'll make it short, despite the length. It started with a goat."

But the goat was a long time ago. Twenty years in fact.

And so much had happened since then.

 **19** **a dinner**

"So, when is Jack getting his doctorate?" JJ asked, Will's arm around her shoulder. Michael and Henry bickered to her side, ignoring Spencer's raised eyebrow at the both of them.

"Next year, with all luck," Jack himself answered, looking up from the screen of his cell. He and Hank were peering down at some new game console, their voices excited as they discussed the merits. Trying not to look _too_ invested, Garcia was listening intently.

From the kitchen, Rossi barked out something that sounded like _too many doctors!_ Aaron replied something very much like _not enough_.

Spencer sat near Emily, just smiling. Above his head, a banner with HAPPY BIRTHDAY had a 58 crossed out by the end, replaced with a 45 and a winking face.

"We're getting old, Spence," Emily said, and leaned her head on his shoulder.

"Good," he said, watching his family. All his family. "We've earned it."

 **18 a puzzle**

"That's not the nose!" Spencer exclaimed, and wrestled the offending piece from his husband. Aaron only put up a tentative defence, because even that small protest against his puzzling skills being questioned was enough to allow himself to be tugged into his husband's lap. "Look. It's clearly the olecranon." The piece hovered above Aaron's eyes, going slightly cross-eyed in response to study it.

"Clearly," he agreed, readjusting his new position to a more comfortable one where he didn't have a zipper digging into his cheek. "And the olecranon is…?" An oscillating fan clattered from across the room, _tick tick ticking_ as it narrated this moment. Spencer's hair ruffled as it passed, and his mouth slipped up into a smile that only deepened the lines around his mouth.

"The prominent point of the elbow," Spencer murmured, dropping the piece and allowing himself to be drawn down against Aaron's mouth. "You're not interested in the puzzle anymore, are you?"

"No," Aaron said honestly. Their hands tangled. The fan ticked. On the cool tiles of their kitchen floor, the dog sighed and thumped his tail to flick a fly away from his black-spotted flank. Outside, summer was quietly tired, the heat pressing everyone down. "Happy anniversary." On his finger, a ring glinted.

"Traditionally, the second anniversary gift involves cotton," Spencer said with a shy smile, his gaze skirting to the puzzle. "I thought you'd prefer this."

"Only if Dave doesn't find that out we do puzzles," Aaron said with a snort, but he really did prefer this. This small moment, this tiny memory.

He'd always much preferred the small moments to the big ones. It really wasn't much of a puzzle to work out why.

They'd had quite enough excitement for one life.

 **17 a birthday**

On the night Jack turned twenty-one, Aaron was late home. He was tense about this, his knuckles rapping on the steering wheel as he drove carefully on the speed-limit, and every glance he received from other commuters—no matter how casual—he wondered if they knew how much he was letting his family down right now.

But his phone had hummed once at the office, a text from Spencer cheerfully proclaiming _dunt rush home, we're fun_.

Aaron hadn't been so worried by a text since the time Spencer had texted him to inform him that he'd broken his arm and possibly a few other vital body parts. A text that Aaron had saved and used as a reminder that 'Spencer doesn't always have the best communication skills'.

Both of them were now ignoring his calls, there was a cheap no-brand ice cream cake that Jack had informed Aaron was 'traditional' for birthdays melting on the passenger seat, and Aaron was _wretched_.

"Damn them," he muttered, juggling briefcase and birthday cake as he strode up the front path. "Damn _damn_ ," he added, as he tried to unlock the front door to the _terrifyingly_ silent house and dropped the cake. Safe in its now somewhat battered cardboard box, the cake was rescued, the door was opened, and Aaron found his family.

Drunk.

Absolutely plastered.

"Dad!" Jack cried, trying to stand up and falling over. Spencer, because he was much smarter—as he explained later with the air of a man unravelling a great mystery—stayed on the floor and simply raised both arms with delight. "Hey, Dad, we're not home, we're drunk." He paused. "Wait."

"You're a bad influence," Aaron told Spencer sadly, making sure he looked the right amount of disappointed. "I let you into my home, my _family_ , and you lead our son down a path of utter depravity."

But he very suddenly had an armful of that son, a faceful of whiskey-sour breath, and Jack hugging him painfully tight and tearfully proclaiming that he was 'the best Dad'.

"I think we did okay," Spencer said softly, once Jack had released him. "I, for one, couldn't be prouder." He drained his glass, the ice clinking, and Aaron almost dropped the cake again with the shock of _lovewarmtharousal_ that hammered into him at this casual proclamation. "I do think that you're entirely too sober for current proceedings, though, Aaron."

Five hours later, they'd remedied that.

The night was briskly warm, despite the October chill slowly creeping in. Jack vanished, picked up by friends who'd been _delighted_ by the state his pa had gotten him into trying to prove that age could outdrink youth. The two men left behind, sorely aware that their son was growing up entirely sensible and far too quickly, found themselves standing outside under the dark autumn sky. An unseasonable cicada sung, a cat yowled down the street, water from the pool that Aaron had scoffed at when they'd bought the house five years ago lapped gently at the side. Aaron walked closer to it, peering into the blue-lit depths and wondering if he'd grown old.

A giggle behind him. The slap of bare feet on stone. Aaron turned as arms tucked around his waist, pulling him in for a drunken, swaying hug. With a smile and a soft groan of appreciation as lips mouthed at the point on his neck that never failed to turn him on, Aaron leaned back into that embrace.

"You're gorgeously drunk," he said, feeling Spencer nestle against him. "If I'd known how cuddly you get when intoxicated, I'd have started feeding you alcohol years ago."

"Cheeky," rumbled Spencer against his ear. "You're gorgeously wet."

 _Huh?_

Aaron opened his eyes just in time to get shoved into the pool. Hitting the water with a crash, he yelled and spluttered and surfaced just in time for Spencer to hurtle in after him, laughing hysterically and flicking hair out of his eyes.

They stared at each other, Spencer grinning and Aaron blinking water away.

"Sorry, not sorry," Spencer breathed, and laughed again. Wading forward to hug Aaron again, his clothes soaked, his mouth wet, and they kissed. " _Oh_. Definitely not sorry."

"You're an ass," Aaron hissed, slipping his hands under a wet shirt and down to hook into equally wet pants. They kissed again, pulling tighter, breathing roughly, the water lapping around them and between them and their hands slippery on each other's skin. "God, I love you."

"Love you too," mumbled Spencer into his mouth, before lolling back and peering up at the sky. A fascination with the stars he'd never lost. Aaron didn't mind. It exposed a long expanse of pale throat that he nibbled his way up, ignoring the brisk breeze setting the skin under his lips to shivering. "Average low temperature for October is sixty-eight degrees."

"How is that relevant?" Aaron asked, lapping at a bead of water trailing down his husband's throat. Spencer's back bumped against the rim of the pool, his hips rocking up, his hands tangling through Aaron's hair as he pulled his head down firmer against his body. They were both hard and panting; Aaron wasn't cold anymore.

"Because," Spencer said with a cocky glance at the tall fences he'd insisted on. "Jack won't be home all night…"

Pool sex wasn't exactly an option, but the tiles beside proved perfectly adequate.

 **16** **a dance**

Their wedding took place in the rain.

Neither regretted that. Spencer, in fact, seemed completely smitten with the idea.

There came a point during the reception, after they'd danced together—stiffly with Aaron leading and Spencer smiling at a point just below his shoulder—after the cake and the speeches and the tears, when Spencer pulled Aaron from the hall and out into the windy night.

"What are you doing?" Aaron laughed, as Spencer kicked at a puddle with no regard for his tux. Spencer whirled, laughing, the rain whipping his hair into spikes. "Your clothes!"

 _Splat._

Aaron stared at the mud on his own suit. His brain shut down for a moment, and he looked up at Spencer in horror.

"There," Spencer said quietly, dragging his jacket off and tossing it aside. The rain plastered his white shirt to his chest, his eyes drunk and smile silly. "Now come here. You're already a mess, we'll be messy together. And I want to show you something."

Aaron went. He took his husband's hand.

In the rain, in the dark, in the mud, they danced.

Spencer led.

"You tend to get lost without me," Spencer murmured, closing his eyes and tipping his head to the sky.

Aaron said nothing, just treasured the man and the moment and the rain.

 **15 a holiday**

He'd let Spencer pick this holiday. He was only a little amused by the fact he picked a resort with a _goat farm_ attached.

"Did you know," Aaron said with a laugh as he watched Spencer trying to bottle feed a cranky baby goat, "I'm pretty sure the first time I fell in love with you, you were holding a goat. Strange, isn't it?"

Spencer paused. Aaron didn't know it, but he was shocked.

And a little validated.

"Not that strange," he said dizzily, straightening. The bottle in his lax hand, the goat protested its removal from his mouth by trying to eat Spencer's shoe. Spencer allowed it. "Marry me?"

Aaron blinked. The goat baa'd.

"Please?" Spencer added. The goat headbutted his knee, tail wagging.

"Yes," Aaron said, and that was that.

 **14 a gift**

Aaron was pretty sure he was fine. He was _absolutely_ sure he was fine.

Everyone else seemed to think he was breaking down, or on the cusp of it, and so they'd conspired to replace his son without his consent.

With a dog.

"Look, Dad, this one's got spots," Jack giggled, and Aaron looked down at his son kneeling in the pen of puppies and vividly remembered him being small. He wasn't small anymore. He was broad-shouldered, his hair blond and curling in just the way Haley's used to, and something small and hard began worming its way up Aaron's throat at the memory. "Why is there a Dalmatian pup in a shelter? Dad, get in here and snuggles some puppies."

"Oh, he got dropped off for not being show quality, unfortunately," the girl escorting them through the shelter explained, leaning over the barricade. "He's not breed standard. A common enough reason we get the pure-breds."

The puppy was wiggling onto Jack's lap, spotty rear-end waggling at a million miles an hour. Jack hugged it close with another laugh, eighteen years old and still enthralled by baby animals. _Never change,_ Aaron thought, and maybe everyone was right.

"Oh, he's a weird dog," Jack said, patting a spaniel that shoved its way under his arm. "We love weird things. Dad loves weird things. Spencer's a weird thing."

"Spencer is not a weird thing," Aaron responded defensively.

From behind them, there was another giggle and a thump of feet. "Aaron, _Aaron_ ," Spencer yelped, walking stiffly into the room with his eyes all big and his smile wide enough that he looked giddy. "They have ferrets here. I have a ferret."

Aaron stared at him. Spencer stared back, slowly lifting his arm to show the button nose poking out from his sleeve.

"It's inside me," Spencer said, his eyes getting even bigger. From inside his coat, there came a muffled _dook dook dook_. "The girl keeps laughing and won't help. _What do I do?_ "

"Oh dear," said the puppy girl, rushing to help. "Stay still, I'll—oop, he's gone deeper, silly thing… hang on, Dr, just um. Come back to the ferret room with me…" They vanished, Spencer's laugh turning high pitched with worry as the ferret oodled it's way further into his person.

"We like weird things," Jack assured the Dalmatian, picking him up and nodding seriously at him.

Aaron decided the only reaction to this was to give in and go into the puppy pen, lowering himself carefully and frowning at the closest dog that tried to leap onto his lap.

"Stop scowling at the puppies," Jack told him. Aaron softened his scowl a bit.

The puppies inched closer.

He increased the scowl, just in case.

"Jesus, Dad," Jack sighed, and dumped the Dalmatian in his lap. " _There_. Hug a dog and be sad about me going to college. And then adopt the dog. Because you're going to be a mess without something to mother."

"I do not mother you," Aaron said stiffly, and then patted the puppy's ears. Soft ears. _Very_ soft ears. "Oh." He patted them a bit more, the puppy closing its eyes and wiggling happily.

"You mother me a little." Jack sprawled out so the dogs that Aaron had frowned at could all find refuge on his lap, in a multi-coloured tangle of paws and ears and wagging tails. "And if you mother Spencer, he'll panic. You know he will. The man doesn't need mothering."

The man had just returned, deferreted and looking shameful. "The ferret stole my keys," he said sadly, letting himself into the puppy pen and plomping himself down in the centre of a wave of puppies. "And my wallet. I was hustled by a _mustelid_. They have goats out back. Can we get a goat? Goats were actually the first animal to be tamed by humans, not just merely domesticated, some nine-thousand years ago. They're a fascinating animal. Oh look, that dog has _spots_."

Aaron looked at Jack. Jack grinned.

"We're getting the Dalmatian," Aaron said firmly, and they did. Spencer won the right to name it.

Aaron never quite forgave him for naming the dog Goat.

 **13 a job**

Aaron took a job as an interim professor of law. He carried a briefcase. He wore, after Spencer had bought it for him as a joke, a coat with elbow patches. And, as a concession to the years that ground on him, he finally conceded to the optometrist's advice and began wearing his thin-framed wire glasses more often.

Spencer couldn't find the words to explain just how much all of this _turned him on_.

"This lecture is proving difficult," Aaron said with a frown, sitting at his desk in his home study wearing his 'teaching' outfit, as Spencer come to privately call it. Spencer perched on the front of the desk and angled his body around to hide his blatant erection as the reading glasses slipped a bit down his partner's nose.

"Maybe you should practise it a little," he said weakly, well aware that he had _extremely_ ulterior motives with this request.

Aaron complied. Spencer informed him, after leaning his elbows on his thighs and looking wonderfully innocent, that he had to _commit_ to the practise.

With a single cocked eyebrow, Aaron did so. Standing and pacing slowly in front of the bookshelf as he delivered the lecture, he became suddenly aware that his single rapt student was… probably a little too rapt.

"Are you…" Aaron began, and then shot a shameless look at his partner's crotch. "Are you _aroused_ by this?"

Spencer just grinned, shrugged, and then slid from the desk to shuffle over on his knees. "Keep practising," he suggested, and mouthed hungrily at the other man's slacks. Aaron spluttered, moaned, threading his fingers through Spencer's wild hair. Voice muffled by cotton and cock, he mumbled, "I'm testing your ability to remain focused under pressure. I'm _helpful_."

"You're a terrible student," Aaron breathed, his back thumping the shelf and belt now undone.

"Oh, god, yes," Spencer moaned. "I'm the worst. _The worst._ You should _scold me_."

It was an illuminating lesson for the both of them. The jacket was an unfortunate casualty.

Aaron found he never could wear again without turning himself on, so it was retired to the closet, and only used for special occasions.

Frequent special occasions.

 **12 a release**

Spencer came home on a sharp spring day, and Aaron was sitting outside his apartment door. Pausing, Spencer looked out the window instead of saying anything he might regret. There were purple lilacs sprawling on the windowsill.

"I used to love spring," he said in lieu of _hello_. "And then Emily died."

"She came back," Aaron replied quietly.

Spencer looked at him. In that moment he was hurt, upset, angry, shaking. Happy. Hopeful.

Mostly hopeful.

"Are you coming back to the BAU?" he asked, and Aaron slowly shook his head.

"I didn't come back to DC for my job," he said, standing. His knees popped. His hair was greying. His eyes looked tired.

"Well," said Spencer. They both looked at the door, at the peeling paint. "You'd better come inside then."

 **11 a homecoming**

Aaron came home the Christmas of 2020, and DC hadn't changed. The same trees, the same sky.

The same man he knew was here somewhere, in the bustle of people and lives around him.

But he didn't go back to the FBI. And he didn't go back to Spencer.

They spent Christmas alone in an apartment with no furniture, he and Jack, and they didn't talk about the man who was missing.

Spencer spent his Christmas with Emily and a bottle of scotch, and they did nothing but think about the ones who weren't there.

It wasn't a good Christmas.

 **10 an interlude**

 _Dear Aaron,_

 _We caught him._

 _Please come home._

 **9 an interlude**

 _Dear Aaron,_

 _It's been two years. They've been… difficult. I've needed you. It's selfish, so selfish, but I've needed you. And I'm angry about that. Angry all the time. I wish I remembered how not to be angry._

 _Emily misses you too. I think she feels your shoes were too big to step into. She shouldn't worry. She's amazing at this, but then, you must have known she would be or else you wouldn't have given her the job._

 _Jack is starting high school this year. Did you know I used to fantasize about coming home and helping him with his homework? A stupid whim. I miss hoping it could happen one day._

 _I miss him._

 _Mom died last month. I don't really have much to say about that. If you were here, it would be easier._

 _I still write to her._

 **8 an interlude**

 _Dear Aaron,_

 _Why am I writing to you? The very fact that you left should already be enough of an implication that my dependency on us being_ _ **us**_ _is pathetically overstated. And yet, I wonder how you are. And I wonder how Jack is._

 _I wonder, constantly._

 _Do you know the thing I regret the most? I never told you how inexorably I fell in love with you. It only took a single moment. And I thought you had to. You looked at me in that moment and you looked like you_ _ **loved**_ _me, even though that vanished a moment later._

 _I may have been wrong about what you were feeling. I very likely was._

 _But I wish I'd had the chance to find out._

 _No one will ever see these letters. Especially not you. You'll never know my hand as I write this; never watch the way it shakes with anger. I am shaking. Right now as I write, I am tremendously furious. And upset. And heartbroken. It's interesting, you'll note, that being heartbroken is very much like being furious._

 _When I find Scratch, I think I'll shake then as well. Because we were us, and now I'm just me. And you're you, wherever you are, but a you that I'll never know._

 _And I am angry about that because I was ready to spend my life learning you._

 _He will regret this._

 **7 a last**

"I'm sorry."

Two words. Just two words.

Spencer, since he couldn't possibly know that this was a last, but not _the_ last, stared at the wall of the kitchen they'd almost shared and said nothing. In the living room, there were boxes. Cardboard and packing tape and they contained a life. Spencer's life.

Spencer's life after Aaron had curled around him in the bed they shared and whispered _move in_.

Spencer's life after he'd said _yes_.

But tonight Aaron sat on the other side of that table, his eyes dangerously bright and his hands shaking on the table. Spencer examined those hands. The veins were stark, the knuckles prominent. Old hands. Aaron had gotten old hands at some point between Spencer wishing him a good morning when they'd woken up just a mere sixteen hours ago, and the moment Peter Lewis had showed himself at Jack's school.

In the living room, two marshals stood with Jack. Waiting to take them away.

"I can't go with you," Spencer said blankly. "I… I _can't_." His mom. He… just couldn't.

"I know," said Aaron.

They didn't even get another night. Aaron and Jack left that evening.

Spencer sat alone, surrounded by boxes. He drank. He paced. He looked in the mirror and his tie was crooked and he hated it, just a little, about as much as he hated himself.

He didn't sleep.

And they were gone.

 **6 a first**

Spencer's turn to soothe him through the night.

Jack could tell his dad wasn't well. It wasn't hard to see.

"He's having nightmares," Jack fretted. "He calls out to me and then gets mad when he wakes and I'm there."

Spencer dragged mattresses into the living room and made a bed on the couch. Aaron was confused.

"Sleepover," Spencer said, Jack nodding along with him.

They slept there that night, all three, and every time Aaron twitched and his breathing sharpened, they were there to reaffirm that they were alive. "You never failed us," Spencer whispered against that sweat-damp hair.

"You never will," Jack added from the couch.

Aaron slept.

Peter Lewis would not break them.

 **5 a bullet**

A bullet whistled and Spencer fell.

It was a moment that almost stole everything away.

After it was over, after the fear and the anger and the shake that threatened to undo Aaron from the top down, they curled together in Spencer's apartment and said very little at all. There was a bandage around Spencer's neck, his skin red-raw and swollen. Listless, feverish, Aaron held him close and soothed him through the night.

"I love you," Spencer mumbled at one point, when it was closer to morning that midnight, and his eyes were glazed. "Have since the goat."

He wouldn't remember saying this when the dawn came.

"I love you, too," Aaron admitted, and padded away to get the weak painkillers that were all the man would take. He was a little gleeful to discover this, despite his worry about the other man's condition.

Spencer would remember this.

Always.

 **4 a** **kiss**

JJ and Will's wedding. They danced with everyone but each other, even as the night slipped on into a hazy morning and they drunk far more than was appropriate.

Spencer slipped away during the night, and Aaron found him standing in a darkened corner of Rossi's garden watching the fairy lights twist in the breeze.

"Emily's leaving," he said, and Aaron replied, "I know."

Spencer turned to him. His eyes were dark, his mouth damp with the alcohol in his hand. He weaved, a little, and stumbled against Aaron's chest. In the dark, Aaron let himself do more than just catch him by one thin elbow. He pulled him close, awkwardly stiff, and let the alcohol goad him into slipping an incautious palm around to the small of the other man's back.

"We haven't danced yet," Spencer said, his voice a little slurred. A little sad. "We should. But I'm not very good at dancing."

"I can lead," Aaron said, bringing his other incautious hand up to the gorgeously drunk man's jaw. Fingers tracing his jaw. His body ached, his heart ached to, and he led. Not in a dance.

He drew their mouths together and the moment stalled. Timeless, it dragged on. The lights glinted around them and they forgot to breathe.

"I keep letting things slip away," Spencer mumbled into his mouth, kissing him again. Slow and heady and Aaron's head spun. "But not this. Not anymore."

"Not anymore," Aaron agreed, and they went home together.

That night was long and incautious, the whole way through, and it also felt inevitable.

 **3 a resurrection**

Emily came back in winter. Spencer already hated the cold, so it didn't really ruin anything for him.

"How could you do this to me?" he demanded of Aaron, standing in a parking lot with the wind ripping at their clothes and their throats.

"It was never about you," Aaron protested.

"What about us?" Spencer said quietly, but the wind stole the words and Aaron never heard them.

 **2 a death**

Emily died in spring and Spencer never really forgave the season for that.

Aaron never really forgave himself.

He only went to the grave once, because it felt impertinent of him to do so. And he didn't know why he went there this day, only that his hands had automatically turned the steering wheel left instead of right, the sky above him blue and cheerful.

He found Spencer there. Blank-eyed, shaking. Aaron wondered if he could keep lying to him.

Spencer wondered if Aaron could tell he was craving.

"Come home with me," Aaron said without glancing once at the _bravery fidelity integrity_ or the name on the stone. "Please."

Spencer went.

He craved.

He admitted nothing of his broken heart.

And Aaron tried. He tried to make him smile, make him laugh. Tried to find some absolution for the woman who'd died to save her life. But it wasn't him who found it.

It was Jack.

"Story, please?" he asked Spencer shyly, and scrambled into the man's lap before Aaron could shoo him away. Spencer shook himself, blinked himself alive, and then _smiled_.

They fell asleep like that. Jack curled up with his head on Spencer's chest and Spencer with one hand cupped around Jack's smaller palm.

Aaron dared to hope.

 **1 an apology**

The day they fell in love ended a lot better than it started.

Aaron found Spencer in the hotel bathroom of the room they shared, sitting on the edge of the bath with his eyes downcast and a towel around his waist. Aaron blinked, wondered for a moment why he hadn't knocked, considered apologising and leaving, and then did neither of these things.

Instead he looked down at his agent and said, "I'm sorry."

Spencer jumped, glancing up and flushing as he folded his wide hands over the crotch of the towel, knees snapping together. His hair was wet and dripping onto the pale line of his shoulders. Aaron watched it bead down a bare chest, and swallowed heavily.

"It's okay," Spencer replied. "It _was_ unprofessional. And I don't think the goat really appreciated my sacrifice for him." He scratched at his chin, as though to pick away phantom grime.

Aaron thought he rather missed the mud.

"But very noble," he said, and smiled, and then quickly left before his brain stopped being sensible. _And very attractive_ , his brain whispered, but he didn't say that.

Maybe things would have happened sooner if he did.

 **0 a goat**

The day they fell in love was entirely unremarkable. Neither of them knew it at that point, but it was the same day for both of them.

For Spencer Reid, it was the moment a little girl found out her dad wasn't coming home. It was a quiet moment, but not a small one, and completely heartbreaking. Aaron crouched, said something that Spencer couldn't hear and never built up the courage to ask about, and the girl slipped into his arms. He held her as she gently fell apart and he didn't let go until she didn't need to comfort anymore.

For Spencer, watching this happen, something clicked. Some small thing. Maybe it was the idea that, if he needed it, he knew those arms would be open to him.

Maybe it was because he was lonely.

Maybe it was the look on Aaron's face, the fear that this would one day be his son. The way he glanced to Spencer and his eyes were soft, his expression pleading. A clear _do this for me, if I ask it_.

And Spencer never quite looked at him the same after that.

For Aaron Hotchner, it was two hours later. They were walking through the field the body had been found in, and Spencer had vanished. Irate, Aaron went looking and found him knee-deep in the mud, an equally muddy baby goat in his arms. Goat and man both turned to look at Aaron, both as sheepish as the other.

"He was stuck," Spencer explained, trying to climb out of the mud and almost slipping further in. The goat baa'd, wiggled, and promptly began eating Spencer's tie. "Oh. Oh dear. Goat, please, um. No."

And something hot and hard twisted its way into Aaron's heart and never quite left. Something made of late night coffees and a deep-seated attraction he'd never admitted to, cemented by the way, despite requiring his arms for balance, Spencer never shifted his grip on the creature in his arms that needed him. Aaron examined him: the mud on his sharp jawline, the rakish flicks to his hair, his crooked tie only made crookeder by the goat trying to devour it.

 _Damn,_ he thought, feeling that warmth settle in his chest. He was used to the warmth, used to it settling lower. Used to passing it off as a baser need. But this wasn't base.

It was a need.

Instead of admitting this, he snapped, "This is seriously unprofessional, Reid. Go back to the hotel and clean up," and walked away without a backyards glance, already feeling guilty and knowing he'd messed up. Thinking that maybe he'd ended something he shouldn't have. He was wrong.

It began with a goat and a man standing alone.

His tie was crooked and that, thankfully, never changed.


End file.
